Jonathan Brun

Voici ma réponse à la question « D’après vous, à quoi la participation citoyenne peut-elle être utile? », publiée dans l’État du Québec 2013 — une livre essentielle pour toute personne concernée par l’évolution de notre société. Disponible en librairie ici.

Des Québécois(es) brillant(e)s

Les meilleures décisions sont celles prises par les personnes et les groupes concernés. Dès que l’on éloigne les décideurs des partis affectés, un clivage entre l’impact voulu et la réalité se façonne. En tant que citoyens ayant des familles, des amis et des emplois, nous constatons quotidiennement des problèmes dans nos quartiers et nos milieux de travail. Même si nous ne détenons pas nécessairement les réponses à portée de main, des citoyens mobilisés, éduqués et impliqués ont les moyens de s’informer et de proposer des pistes de solutions qui peuvent améliorer leur qualité de vie. « Monsieur et Madame tout le monde » est beaucoup plus intelligent qu’on ne le pense.

Chez Wal-Mart, les employés jouissent de pouvoirs remarquables. Malgré sa taille imposante, chaque employé, peu importe son rang ou son niveau d’éducation, peut consulter le coût et le profit de tout article en magasin – des informations normalement gardées secrètes. S’il le croît opportun, il peut également décider de mettre un article en vente sans l’autorisation d’un supérieur. Lors d’une belle fin de semaine, un employé peut donc réduire le prix des BBQ à son gré. Wal-Mart sait que ses employés connaissent mieux leur communauté que son siège social et octroie le pouvoir décisionnel en conséquence. Bien que nos gouvernements soient plus complexes qu’un magasin Wal-Mart, ils partagent deux ressemblances: leur taille ainsi que la diversité des individus impliqués dans leur succès. Wal-Mart démontre bien que les grandes organisations qui comptent des millions d’employés ainsi que des centaines de millions de clients sont plus efficaces lorsque le pouvoir est partagé avec les gens qui sont sur le terrain.

Des études scientifiques financées et gérées par un gouvernement central sont essentielles pour prendre des décisions locales éclairées. Or, l’information ainsi cueillie et traitée se doit d’être accessible à tous. Si chaque employé de Wal-Mart peut consulter les détails de tout produit en magasin, chaque citoyen québécois doit être en mesure de consulter les plus petits détails de ses institutions publiques. L’accès à plus d’informations met les citoyens sur un pied d’égalité avec les fonctionnaires et les élus, permettant ainsi aux Québécois de se rapprocher de l’idéal grec d’une ville qui se réunit pour décider ensemble.

Si le but de la démocratie est de réaliser la volonté du peuple, les pouvoirs décisionnels doivent être remis entre ses mains. Tel que Platon l’a expliqué, “le plus grand châtiment pour l’homme de bien, s’il refuse de gouverner les autres, c’est d’être gouverné par un plus méchant que soi”. C’est donc par l’implication citoyenne que nous réussirons à faire cheminer notre société et à bâtir une démocratie moderne qui fera rayonner le Québec à travers le monde.

Despite having started a number of articles, I have not been able to finish much lately. My energy has been focused on Québec Ouvert, where we just launched I Vote for Transperency 2014 for the current provincial elections, Nimonik where we are expanding and growing our operations and finally, on a new project titled Fight Club Politique.

The political debate club is an idea that came up while reading some excellent books on the american and french revolutions (For Liberty and Glory and A short introduction to the french revolution). The idea is to have an open discussion on political issues of the day, to draw local leaders into an intellectual brawl and to have a good time. More than anything, it is an experiment.

So far, I have not determined the exact format, location or structure, I think something will emerge after a few rounds. The first proposed debate topic will likely be, “If Québec seperates from Canada, Montréal should declare itself to be a city-state”. Should be lots of fun, hope you can join!

For Education blog Post
Noam Chomsky was recently asked at his Jon Dewey Memorial lecture at Columbia University what he thought of education reform, he replied, “It is a euphemism for the dismantling of public education” (1). Lately, I have been thinking a good deal about freedom, liberty and the path to serfdom. How do you enslave people without making them realize their slavery?

There are a variety of ways and tools to enslave people: debt, ignorance, ethnic divisions, manipulation, …etc. But, I think the most powerful method is to deny people education and to devalue reasoning and science. We are managing to do both of those quite well in North America. With sky rocketing education costs and stagnant wages for low and middle income positions, many people not born to privilege must forgoe higher education. Elementary and Secondary education is also under attack through budget cuts and blind use of standardize testing (4).

The Canadian government has also mounted a full out attack on scientific research and debate (2). They closed down low-cost world class research centres such as the Experimental Lakes Area in Ontario. They have gagged government scientists and failed to appoint any top level advisers with the slightest scientific background to the Prime Minister’s office. The message is clear, education and science are out.

There is a running joke in Russia that it is the only country where you can hire a cleaning lady with a PhD. We laugh, but it is true. The Soviets did many horrible things and were no fan of individual freedom, but they did offer high quality universal education. However, a consequence of higher education is often that a person is less likely to blindly do what they are told. In North America, the dominant narrative in society is that you should consume. More goods, bigger house, better car etc. Buy more, be happy. This is a message that can be easily conveyed to people who lack analytical skills to detect when they are being manipulated.

I would be curious to know if anyone has studied the relationship between education and consumption patterns. It seems to me that the more educated you are, the less likely you are to consume material goods – but I do not know of any studies that prove it. In Québec, we have pretty affordable education, seven dollar a day daycare and high calibre primary and secondary education. Perhaps that is why storefronts in the downtown core are empty and the economy is stuttering?

Ignorance is perhaps the most powerful tool to keep someone enslaved, it is even more powerful when the person is unaware of their ignorance. Without knowledge and reasoning, we are subject to what we are told. The lack of questioning of the policies and economic principles in general Canadian society is worrisome. As public education institutions such as the CBC become commercialized due to budget cuts, higher education fees continue to rise and teacher’s pay keep getting reduced – we should ask ourselves what kind of Canada we will have in 20 years. The satirical website The Onion, perhaps put it most succinctly by asking, “Are we leaving our children far enough behind that they will never take our jobs” (3).

High quality education costs a great deal of money, because the true aim of eduction is to give a deep, meaningful understanding of a subject and allow a person to perform in a competitive real world situation. Much of the educational reforms proposed by different groups – online videos, Coursera, Khan Academy … etc. often give the illusion of high quality education, but in fact give a very superficial understanding of a subject matter.  Also, the fact that most online courses are taken in isolation of other students reduces your ability compare yourself to other students in ways that are not quantifiable. I am not saying online courses are of no use, they are great for casual learning and reinforcing general principles or digging into a specific subject – but they are no replacement for free traditional teacher based teaching.

I recall my time in engineering school and how came to realize how much better some of my peers were. My test scores were respectable, I finished with a 3.4 GPA at McGill, but I knew deep down that my depth of knowledge was not nearly as good as some of my friends. My test scores were often the result of cramming before exams, a bit of luck, on the spot reasoning and a calm demeanour during exam time. One element of my education was my appreciation of the qualities of other individuals and a clarification of my own competencies, capabilities and true passions. I fear that an isolated education leads to misplaced levels of confidence.

Paul Potts came onto the music scene in 2007 when he performed a portion of Puccini’s Nessun dorma! on the reality television show (5), “Britain’s Got Talent”. He went on to win the show and put out a series of discs. His rags to riches story was inspiring and heart warming, so when he put out his latest album, I bought a copy. It was average. At the time of his instant fame, many veteran opera singers came out and said his performance was full of mistakes and false notes. Of course, the average person who rarely listened to opera could not tell the difference, especially since it lasted no more than 30 seconds. But once you put him up in a truly competitive market – against other Opera singers – you saw all his shortcomings and his lack of years and years of formal opera training.

A similar story, though with a less happy ending, is the fall of Thomas “TJ” Webster Jr., a street basketball player. He was a down and out street ball player who believed he had a shot at the world’s most prestigious street basketball tournament. Back home, he practiced by himself or with some of the locals, whom he easily beat. His confidence was inflated beyond measure and with his meagre savings, he boarded a bus for the New York City street ball tournament. The great article in SB Nation outlines his journey and his downfall (6). Upon arrival in NYC, he entered the tournament and the gaps in his game, skills and tactics quickly rose to the surface – in the face of the very real competition. His lack of years formal training and competition in basketball camps and on college campuses killed any chance he thought he had. There was no replacement for years of gruelling work and competition in the furnace of college sports.

Though there are a few cases of lone self taught geniuses such as Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (7), the vast majority of excellence is born through mass high quality education in a competitive and collaborative environment. The short story about education is that there are no shortcuts. Someone who says they have a magic solution to high quality education is either ignorant, naive or has ulterior motives. Education reform is possible, but it should be done in very small and measured dosses and frankly, any improvement in education will require more resources – not less. We want to build Pavarottis and Lebron James, not Paul Potts and TJs.

To ensure we build a strong society, we must improve our education system and be very cautious of any education reform that does not involve more resources and importance on the quality of education. The Finnish education system is amongst the best and it unsurprisingly includes very high teacher pay, smaller classrooms and not much of a reliance on technology (8). It is essential that we stand up for very high quality free education for all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alpha Delta Phi Memorial (McGill) Brothers on the front during WW1.

Walking around Toronto and Montréal these days, it is remarkable how few people are sporting poppies. To be fair, I grew up at an anglophone all-boy school and then joined a fraternity with strong military ties at McGill, so between November 1st and November 11th poppies were everywhere. The fraternity was in fact renamed the Memorial Chapter because over 30 brothers died in each world war. Of course, the horrors of war have disappeared from our lives, thanks to international agreements, democracy and darker things too – mercenaries and drones who do our dirty work for us. Keeping the dogs of war at bay requires constant education, the active promotion of peace and so that we always remember the tremendous price we once did pay.I am a passionate proponent of non-violence and have argued for wearing a white poppy. However, wearing no poppy is far worse than either a red or white poppy.

Are the lack of poppies a reflection of continued separation of the individual from the national identity? Are we so absorbed by Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones or Occupation Double that we cannot pause to donate a few dollars to our veterans associations and ponder the lives lost during war? With civil war raging in Syria, a counter-revolution in Egypt, drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, massacres of Muslims in Burma and innumerable other conflicts of suffering and pain, surely we can take a bit of time to reflect about war and violence in our society. A nation is by definition a series of individuals bound by culture and traditions; otherwise, we become a bunch of autonomous individuals engaged in financial transactions. History and shared experience form the bedrock of our national identity.

With decreasing historical knowledge across Canada, it is not surprising to see less poppies. Ignorance of history is a dangerous path to tread down, we will be prone to repeat the errors of the past and our defences to new assaults will be weakened. As Cicero stated, “To not know history is to forever be a child”. As far as I can tell, the lack of poppies are not restricted to the young, new Canadians or any particular group of people – it seems to be widespread and troubling. With the Conservative government cutting and slashing veterans’ affairs and pensions for soldiers, it is a better time than ever to show national solidarity. You need not agree with war in general or our interventions in Afghanistan, I certainly do not. But demonstrating you know about the wars we have fought and are currently fighting is a way to show you care about Canada, its history, about your family and about your neighbours. This year, I decided to wear both a white and red poppy because I believe in helping the veterans and in promoting peace, I hope you will join me.

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

For the same reason you buy home insurance, you should stand against government surveillance. The recent revelations of the National Security Agency (NSA) PRISM project that collects electronic communications are shocking – though not surprising. Under this program and others, the US Government actively monitors electronic communication of most Americans and most Canadians speaking with Americans. The NSA watches us in the name of security. They claim the collected information helps prevent catastrophic terrorist attacks, a sort of Minority Report that predicts crimes before they happen. We consent to this in the name of security. Is the exchange of freedom for temporary peace worth the cost?

If we define freedom as the freedom from oppression and the freedom to act as we desire, within the constraints of democratically enacted law, then it follows that we are no longer free. These surveillance programs remove your most basic freedom – whether you realize it or not. You cannot act freely if your thoughts, relationships, and speech are constantly monitored and analyzed; you end up in constant fear of oppression by the state. Did you know Ernest Hemingway committed suicide due to depression, compounded by constant surveillance by the FBI because of socialist sympathies?

The threat of force is usually enough to exert power. With your phone records, emails, Facebook messages and GPS locations; one day, when convenient, the people who have this information can ruin your life. Since the average citizen breaks three laws a day by speeding, paying cash, or fishing out of season – you are already guilty of something and the prosecutors already have all the evidence they need. No matter how hard you try or how good you think you are, you will break the law, some law, and the record is stored in a server farm, not so far away. Of course you will likely never be prosecuted, but one day that can all change.

Most of us buy home insurance to protect against catastrophic events – fire, flood, or tornadoes. We fear losing something precious and expensive, so we pay a fee just in case. Since you could opt for a vacation instead of insurance premiums, you are sacrificing current pleasure for peace of mind. With massive government surveillance programs, nothing stands between a zealous prosecutor (read: flood) and a destroyed life. A principal lever to restrict power is to restrict information. The creation of barriers between government and citizens might cost security today, but they offer freedom tomorrow. The power of government is well demonstrated by the prosecution of activists. This year, when faced with 25 years behind jail and mountains of legal bills for trying to help free publicly funded information, Aaron Schwartz killed himself – like Hemingway. Bradly Manning, the person behind Cablegate, is in jail indefinitely. Mandela spent 25 years in jail. The list is long.

It is not just activists who need fear the hammer of the judge. The well intentioned citizen who may have toked up in college, drank one too many beers, driven a little too fast or forgot to declare a little income has just as much to fear when those above him know every detail of every mistake he ever made. Want to run for mayor or take down a crooked politician? Forget it. Your competitors have all the details on your mistress, your drinking habits, and they can bring out that email you sent to your ex-girlfriend after a few too many drinks. The threat to harm is as powerful as the actual blow.

Freedom costs something. If we want a free society, we must give up certain short term comforts. We decided that our justice system should let some guilty criminals go free to ensure fewer innocent citizens are jailed. Today, we presume innocence and the government must prove you are guilty without a reasonable doubt. Mass surveillance removes the barriers between the citizen and the government, the consequences are a shackled society where we all live in fear and our actions are restricted. Freedom requires walls between centres of power, it requires limiting what government, companies and each of us know about each other. To know everything about everyone is to be all powerful. A surveillance state is the closest thing we have to an all-knowing, all powerful, judgmental Catholic God who sends us to hell for our inevitable sinful thoughts.

Democracy was conceived to remove absolute monarchs and distribute power amongst the people. Lincoln’s democracy, based on a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” will perish from this earth if it possesses a window into our minds. If you voluntarily give your hard earned liberties to secret government courts, private interests and power hungry institutions, do not expect them back anytime soon. If and when they decide to come for you, it will be at their convenience. The bag-men don’t come when the sun shines and the world watches, they come at night.

********

The well known poem by pastor Martin Niemöller rings very true.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Links of interest

• Hemingway committed suicide because of surveillance
• Memories of Stasi
• Rundown of PRISM scandal
• Q&A with Snowden
• Great video interview with Snowden
• No Freedom without Free Software
• Privacy and the threat to self by Flynch
• The Irrationality of giving up this much liberty to fight terror
• Rex Murphy’s idiotic criticism of transparency
• Lincoln’s surveillance state

La crise étudiante de 2012 a déjà fait couler beaucoup d’encre, mais je propose néanmoins d’offrir quelques réflexions. Avec l’élection du Parti Québecois, il semble que la crise soit terminée –  enfin, pour le moment. Lors des démonstrations du printemps dernier, j’ai eu de nombreuses discussions avec des personnes des deux côtés du débat. Les arguments avancés étaient sensibles et logiques; financement des universités, juste part vs. accessibilité pour tous les étudiants. Ils n’allaient toutefois pas toujours au fond de la question de la juste valeur de l’éducation supérieure et des priorités d’une société.

J’avoue que je n’ai pas participé aux manifestations, mais je ne soutenais pas non plus la hausse proposée. Je crois que la situation est plus complexe et nuancée que les positions simplistes de l’ancien gouvernement et des associations étudiantes. Selon moi, notre but en tant que société devrait être d’offrir un système d’éducation accessible à tous les jeunes avec des frais de scolarité modulés selon le salaire et le diplôme obtenu.

Il est objectivement vrai que la vie des jeunes finissants universitaires est plus difficile aujourd’hui qu’elle l’était en 1965 ou en 1985. Les emplois sont plus précaires, moins accessibles et moins rémunérés. Le logement coûte beaucoup plus cher, même en tenant compte de l’inflation, et beaucoup de jeunes se demandent comment ils vont faire pour acheter une maison et élever une famille sans s’endetter à vie. Ces craintes et angoisses sont une des grandes sources des manifestations et réclamations des jeunes Québécois et Québécoises (on constate les mêmes craintes dans le mouvement mondial d’Occupons Wall Street en 2012).

Il demeure néanmoins que beaucoup de gouvernements à travers le monde peinent à combler leurs budgets et qu’ils sont nombreux à couper dans les programmes sociaux. Au Québec et ailleurs, les dépenses d’État grimpent sans cesse, dû à un système de santé qui doit servir une population vieillissante et le besoin d’investir dans le renouvellement des infrastructures.

Au Québec, nous avons déjà les impôts les plus élevés en Amérique du Nord et nous venons d’augmenter les taxes de ventes, ce qui affecte particulièrement les personnes de la classe moyenne. Même avec ces efforts, nous sommes une province pauvre. En 2012, le Québec recevra près de 4,4 milliards de dollars en transferts de péréquation. Cette situation ne peut durer, surtout avec un gouvernement fédéral conservateur et les négociations des transferts de péréquation en 2013. Il faut donc absolument trouver des moyens d’améliorer l’efficacité des services publics et de les rendre plus “intelligents”.

Pour résoudre des problèmes de société comme la hausse des frais de scolarité, il faut entamer un dialogue de société. D’une part, on doit mieux comprendre et exposer les états financiers de nos institutions d’enseignement (voir article de Québec Ouvert). D’autre part, les étudiants doivent comprendre qu’il faut modifier le système actuel. Une démocratie qui fonctionne demande l’action constructive des citoyens et du gouvernement. Trop souvent, les citoyens revendiquent sans offrir de travailler à trouver des solutions réalisables. Ce manque de communication oblige le gouvernement à prendre des décisions sans la participation des citoyens concernés, ce qui peut mener à des manifestations comme nous en avons connues.

Le principe qui devrait guider nos discussions à propos des frais de scolarité est simple : garantir l’accessibilité de notre système d’éducation à chaque Québécois et Québécoise. Si nous sommes en accord sur notre but, la question devient alors comment fait-on?

Mon profond désir pour le Québec est que nous devenons une méritocratie. Une société où les personnes peuvent monter et descendre les échelles socioéconomiques selon leurs compétences et éthiques de travail. Pour cela, il est absolument essentiel d’avoir un système d’éducation accessible à tous les citoyens car l’éducation est le meilleur moyen pour égaliser le terrain de jeu entre les couches sociales.

Des études démontrent qu’il y a peu de corrélation entre le coût d’un diplôme universitaire et l’accessibilité, mais beaucoup entre l’accès et la mobilité sociale. Le gel des frais de scolarité proposé par les étudiants est une approche « bulldozeur » où l’on devrait employer un couteau. Pourquoi ne pas augmenter les frais d’un diplôme médical qui coûte beaucoup plus cher à offrir et qui mène à un emploi quasi garanti avec un salaire de 150 000$? Mis à part quelques professions, il est vrai qu’il est impossible de prévoir la valeur d’un diplôme, ce système n’est donc pas simple à implanter. Il s’agit toutefois d’une bonne piste de reflexion.

D’un autre côté, il semble logique que l’on offre la gratuité scolaire pour des bacs en histoire, philosophie et autres domaines qui offrent moins de possibilités d’emploi, mais qui enrichissent la vie des étudiants et la culture générale de notre société. Ces diplômés en histoire et en arts pourront ensuite s’investir dans une formation plus technique telle que la médecine, le droit et l’ingénierie qui proposent de meilleures opportunités d’emploi. L’excellent article du magazine Walrus explique clairement les difficultés démographiques et socio-économiques de notre système d’éducation actuel.

Pour offrir une éducation de qualité à un prix abordable ou nul, il nous faut une économie qui fonctionne. Le mouvement étudiant du printemps 2012 s’est trop mêlé avec des mouvements anticapitalistes et anarchistes en visant le Grand Prix de Montréal, Power Corporation ou les banques. Peu de citoyens de la classe moyenne croient à présent dans une vision anarchiste ou anticapitaliste. Ils sont plutôt de l’opinion que la richesse d’une société provient des entreprises qui emploient des personnes, produisent des produits et paient des impôts. Nos écoles, musées, arts et cultures ont besoin d’un secteur privé fort, responsable et stable. L’inverse est également vrai, les entreprises ont besoin de citoyens et travailleurs bien instruits. Lorsque j’ai traversé la Russie, j’ai souvent entendu la blague que c’est le seul pays où l’on peut embaucher une femme de ménage détenant un doctorat.

Comme vous l’aurez deviné, je n’ai pas de solution magique à proposer à ce problème de société. Je souhaite tout de même proposer quelques idées qui pourraient aider à moderniser nos institutions d’éducation et améliorer leur état fiscal.

1. Gratuité pour certains diplômes

Je propose la gratuité scolaire pour certains diplômes et des hausses des frais de scolarité pour d’autres. Un baccalauréat en histoire n’est pas la même chose qu’un diplôme en médecine. Geler tous les frais pour tous les programmes, comme le propose les associations étudiantes, c’est l’équivalent de mettre le même prix sur tous les produits dans un supermarché. En augmentant les frais de scolarité pour tout le monde, on finit par encourager les personnes à se concentrer dans des professions qui sont rentables. Cela risque de mener à une société sans fond culturel, philosophique et politique — bref, sans profondeur.

À ce sujet, le système australien, que je ne prétends pas connaître en détails, me semble logique. Les frais de scolarité dépendent du salaire après les études. Par exemple, si une personne fait des études en droit et devient avocat en droit des affaires, celle-ci doit payer plus de frais de scolarité qu’un avocat pratiquant en droit social par exemple. En modulant les frais de scolarité selon le salaire après les études, nous communiquerons mieux la valeur d’une éducation tout en garantissant la liberté de choisir ses études sans crainte d’endettement excessif. Cette approche rend le financement du système d’éducation plus intelligent (même le président Obama propose quelque chose de semblable aux États-Unis).

2. Transparence dans les états financiers des universités

Comme l’initiative populaire Québec Ouvert (dont je suis cofondateur) l’a très bien décrit, nous devons augmenter la transparence des finances de nos institutions d’enseignement. Si le public et les étudiants ne peuvent pas facilement analyser les finances, comment peut-on proposer des solutions? Les états financiers, les dépenses et les salaires des employés devraient être rendus publics en format ouvert et numérique. Avec ces informations, les étudiants pourront davantage être en mesure de participer aux grandes décisions et aider dans la gestion de leur université.

3. Diffuser gratuitement le contenu des universités québécoises en ligne

Il faut non seulement moderniser la gestion financière, mais aussi les méthodes d’enseignement. À ma connaissance, il n’y a aucune université québécoise qui diffuse gratuitement les cours sur Internet. Pourtant, des universités américaines telles que MIT et Stanford le font depuis plusieurs années. La diffusion des cours serait un moyen d’offrir plus d’éducation aux Québecois, de faire rayonner nos institutions à l’extérieur du Québec et de valoriser le travail de nos professeurs et chercheurs. On pourrait contribuer à Open CourseWare (OCW) ou à d’autres programmes d’enseignement gratuits en ligne. Des cours tel que Justice à Harvard aide à diffuser la philosophie morale à des millions de personnes à travers le monde et Khan Academy aide les étudiants à l’école secondaire (voir son TED Talk). Cela pourrait également contribuer à augmenter l’intérêt des étudiants à fréquenter l’université et réduire le décrochage scolaire en démontrant ce que les universités ont à offrir.

4. Révolutionner la publication des livres scolaires

Nous pourrions également embarquer dans la libération d’information d’enseignement en rendant les livres de cours gratuits sur Internet à tous les niveaux du système d’éducation. L’industrie du livre d’éducation est déjà très connue pour ses moyens néfastes d’extraire le plus d’argent possible des étudiants (billet en anglais ici et commentaires). Le Québec pourrait devenir un exemple à travers le monde en encourageant nos professeurs à créer ou à collaborer pour offrir des livres libre source sur internet. En travaillant à libérer nos connaissances et les offrir aux autres, les institutions d’enseignement québécoises rayonneront à l’échelle internationale et pourront aider l’enseignement dans des pays francophones en voie de développement. La Californie vient de signer une loi qui permettra la création de livres de cours en format ouvert et qui aidera à réduire les coûts d’enseignement. Et lors d’un Hackathon en Finlande, des professeurs ont créé un livre gratuit en ligne pour leurs étudiants.

Certes ces idées proposées semblent peut être dramatiques et demandent un changement de culture profond, mais je crois que nous pourrons seulement résoudre nos problèmes de société en apportant des changements majeurs. Il faut s’attaquer à la racine de nos problèmes, pas simplement appliquer des pansements temporaires. Nos institutions d’enseignement ont été conçues pour le 20ième siècle sans internet, nous devons les moderniser en tenant compte des possibilité de diffusion de contenu, de partage de responsabilité et de transparence de gestion.

Il n’y a pas de solution facile à ces problèmes, mais il est évident que nous ne pouvons pas continuer sur la voie actuelle. Le gouvernement et les étudiants doivent laisser leurs positions idéologiques derrière eux et changer le paradigme dans lequel notre système d’éducation se trouve. La justice sociale ne se règlera pas cet automne, il est donc essentiel que nous entamions une discussion de profondeur à propos de nos valeurs de société et de nos institutions d’enseignement.

L’article par Clay Shirky à propos de l’éducation en ligne est fortement recomendé.

My two favourite films are Baraka and now, Samsara. Both are silent movies that travel the globe in exquisite detail. Far too many movies use speech, sound effects and music as a form of filler for mediocre stories, images, and acting. These two films show you factory farms, sex workers, garbage pickers, wealth, poverty, and beautiful art – but they do not tell you what to think. In many ways I find the experience more fulfilling. The absence of a narrator seems to be a sign of respect by the director for the audience’s intelligence. That respect conveyed through emptiness is perhaps what differentiates art from entertainment. Art makes you think, entertainment tells you what to think – or not to think.

Manufactured Landscapes and Koyaanisqatsi are similar, but lack a je ne sais quoi. That’s all I have to say.

Blue Monochrome byYves Klein

Oh and who can forget Chaplin’s one and only use of speaking film:

Charity requires sacrifice. Perhaps sacrifice is not the best word, but rather austerity and humility. Lately, I have been thinking of the nature of charity.

Today, too many charitable organizations have been turned into fundraising machines that now have money as their primary goal. While financial ressources are essential to helping others, it cannot be an organization’s primary purpose. Charitable action must be duty bound, meaning it must be an action that directly helps others with as little benefit to yourself as possible. In contrast to this principle, in recent years we have seen the dramatic rise of sporting events as means for charitable organizations to raise money for their operations, such examples include 24-hour bike rides, hockey games with former professional athletes or ski marathons. The obvious argument about these organized events is the percentage of raised money that actually makes it to the organization. While that is a fair criticism, I believe it misses the moral imperative of participation in these events.

When I was a student at McGill University, a good friend of mine started a charitable organization to build a school in war ravaged northern Uganda. This was a noble cause indeed; if anyone needed more free schooling, it was them. To raise capital for the school, she employed a number of tactics and strategies. Most of them consisted in asking for money, organizing marches and promoting the organization. But, some of the strategies included hosting fancy parties at high end nightclubs in Montreal where a portion of the bar revenue would go to the organization in question. So, 22-year old students would gleefully spend their parents money on champagne and expensive vodka with the solace that some portion of their extravagance would make it to destitute children in Northern Uganda.

To me, these fundraising strategies of sporting events and gala evenings are a false form of charity because the participants of the events are enjoying themselves first and being charitable second. While enjoyment alone is not a sin, it does pose a problem when it becomes the main driver of participation. In Montreal, a large Cancer Society organizes a fundraising bike ride from Montréal to Québec in addition to other cities. The event in question is sponsored by Enbridge, a major pipeline company who has had numerous spills of highly polluting and carcinogenic oil into the environment and who propose a dangerous pipeline across pristine natural land in British Columbia. But I digress, participants of the bike rides to cure cancer must raise a minimum of 2500$ to participate, receive a jersey, food and infrastructure. They then get to bike in the beautiful Québec countryside for two days; I’m sorry that sounds more like a vacation than a charity event. From my perspective, true charity is only possible when you decide to forgo worldly pleasures for the joy of helping others. You cannot do both at the same time.

Through that reasoning, I find it very hard to donate money to these types of events. They smack of false charity that might be successful in raising awareness and generating revenue, but fail to meet the fundamental definition of charity. Jesus did not say, “Let’s party on 100 shekel Roman wine and give 15% for the redemption of our souls and children’s education.” The ends do not justify the means.

It is important to not blindly give to charity. The pink ribbon campaign for breast cancer research is another example of the transformation of charity into a commercial practice. Companies who offer unhealthy drinks and products slap the pink ribbon onto their products in the hope of selling more and perhaps trickling some money to cancer research. Many of their products are in fact potentially carcinogenic – from hairspray to sugary drinks to products made in polluting factories in China by poorly paid workers and then transported across the world on bunker oil burning tankers that cause smog and acid rain. How can that be called charity?

Charity must come from the depths of the soul. Before you can give charity, you must first become a charitable person and it begins and ends with yourself. As Gandhi stated, “Be the change you want to see”. In our times, people like Warren Buffet perhaps best exemplify this. Despite his massive wealth, he lives modestly and plans to progressively give away nearly all his money. I have heard rumours he even refused to give money to his grandchildren for cars and washing machines, he believes that material possessions should be earned when they can be. When a person lacks the ability earn their way, due to oppression, bad luck or some other event – they deserve help.

In this world, our personal actions are the only thing we have control over and true charity must come from the person. Humility and austerity must be the foundation of giving; without it, the act of charity becomes a narcissistic event that regardless of the financial success, lacks the morality, humility and honesty required to kneel down in the mud and help our fellow human stand up.

Edit: See this video for a funnier version of this post.

This year, I had the great privilege of being invited to give a talk on the future of democracy at TEDxMontreal. The event was wonderfully organized and the other speakers were all fantastic. Below is the talk and the original text, from which I deviated a bit due to fatigue, stress, and talking too slow. Overall, I think it went well, but I am very keen for your feedback. Was my point clear? Was it convincing? Are you ready to upgrade our democracy?

Many friends ask me why I work on Open Data initiatives at Montréal Ouvert, Québec Ouvert and Open North. This is why:

Jonathan Brun says it’s time to upgrade our democracy.

Do you remember the future? I am talking about the future we used to dream of: The flying cars, the miracle cures, the smiling families, spotless streets and monorails. What happened to it? Where is it?

I mean, part of it is here. We’ve sent a man to the moon, we’ve got devices that allow us to talk with anyone in the world, and we can easily procure the most exotic foods. In fact, anyone of of us can walk out of this room, down the street and for twenty bucks you can buy spices from India and vegetables from China. And even at minimum wage that’s only a few hours of labour.

Yet, if your city is any I know of, on your walk to the supermarket you’re likely to cross a person asking for money and possibly needing medical and psychological help. So, while we still have homelessness in our wealthiest cities, we can purchase 3$ spices from India. Let’s face it, our imagined future is not yet here – we still so many of the problems we thought we would have solved by now – poverty, access to education, affordable healthcare or equality between men and women. These problems we have failed to solve are communal failures, it’s not a single person or group’s or political party’s fault, it is our fault. If we all agree homelesness is bad and we don’t want it, why can’t we get government and society to act? We need to start talking better.

In 2011, a borough in the city of Montreal tried something new and innovative. They created an online budget simulator. Citizens could modify the budget, reduce certain services such as library hours and increase others, like pothole repairs. However, before submitting their budget, they had to balance it. This exercise played two important roles. First, it educates citizens about the costs of services. Secondly, it put the citizen in the same shoes as the public administrator. The borough received over 500 balanced budgets that allowed them to make representative decisions on behalf of the citizens. This hard data from the citizens was structured around facts, making the city administration accountable.

Contrast that to an in-person budget consultation, where people physically go to a consultation, maybe a dozen people in this room have been to one. They typically cost 10 times more and receives far less valuable data. The people who come to in person consultations often are the most outspoken, engaged and vocal. They all seem to unicorns and money trees, who doesn’t!

How do you reach that single mother of three working two jobs? You certainly can’t ask her to travel 45 minutes to speak for two minutes during a four hour town hall meeting. The barrier to participation is just too high for her.

This budget simulator allows her to participate and voice her priorities. And that’s the key, we need to get government and all citizens, from the single mother to the bike riding hipster, talking in a constructive manner. We need social feedback loops. The private sector has great feedback loops, they’re called products. You like something you buy it, you don’t you dont. Companies that sell products prosper. In democacy our best feedback loop is voting and we know how well that works.

Many municipal elections only get 30% participation, that is 1/3 people – just in case the math wasn’t clear! How many of us can say we voted at your last municipal election. Democracy advocates promise various solutions to this problem – changes to the electoral system, education, awareness, or instilling civic responsibility, etc – they aim to bump those participations by 2, 3, or 5%. I’m sorry, that’s a pathetic goal. I will not be satisfied until everyone in this room feels they can have an impact ont heir communities.

Not so long ago, we were debating if women should vote, I mean they’re only half the population. Emma Goldman was a militant feminist of the late 19th and early 20th century. When that debate was going on, she wrote an essay where she stands against woman suffrage. Not because women are incapable, or uneducated or too emotional, but because voting is a distraction from true democracy. She worried giving the right to vote would lead to apathy. I often hear, “Hey I voted, I participated, now let me watch TV!” But democracy is not a 20 minute exercise every 4 years.

The main reason people seem apathetic is simple is not because they don’t care, they do. People feel they don’t have an impact.

People tell me all the time – they’ve tried, they sent a letter to their elected official, participated in a consultation and nothing came of it – they go home feeling government is this massive structure of immovable size and even if they spent all of their spare time trying to affect it, they’d fail. The feedback loop for government is too slow. And that apathy is born out of perceived powerlessness.

Occasionally, we do rally together for change – most often in movies where we’re attacked by aliens or our when our underdog sports team wins the championship. With those external threats and victories, we become one, we engage in a common project, look in the same direction, our differences melt away and we focus our energy on the task at hand. But the real hard problems are not external to us – it’s not the Taliban, communists, or an alien race that threaten us; it is our own shortcomings, our own crime and injustice done upon our neighbours.

Recently, here in Montreal, a high school student was severely beaten by a classmate. The fight, or rather the pounding, was announced in advance – by text message. The time and location were set – everyone knew what was coming, except the victim.

The students, friends, congregated outside, and waited. The bully, twice the size of the victim, grabbed him and then proceeded to punch and kick his classmate until blood stained the cement school yard. The kid’s eye was shattered, his jaw broken and everyone just stared. This vicious violence was not done by a gang, or a criminal, it was done by a classmate, a neighbour.

And while this student’s face was being smashed in, fifty of his classmates looked on and taped the savagery on their smart phones, all eager to upload to Youtube. This spectacle of unbelievable apathy happens all the time at schools around the world.

I was picked on at school, called names, pushed around – discussing democratic reform in second grade was not as popular as you might think. My guess is many of us were bullied, or saw it happen, or even participated in it. When bullies strike, we can blame the school for a failure to intervene, or blame the bully for hitting the classmate or blame the onlookers who dont intervene. The answer of course is that everyone is to blame.

Injustice always starts at the personal level, but it can quickly become intitutionalized and grow – like a cancer.

My jewish name is Joseph, I’m named after my grandfather, Joseph, who I am told was a strong Polish man with a thick neck and a mean temper. He was born in Poland in 1920, in 1939, with dark clouds descending over Europe, his father Moishe and mother Clara decided to emigrate from from south eastern Poland to Canada, just east of Winnipeg. They fled Poland just in time.

The situation for jews in Europe in 1939 was so bad, so dire, that my great grandfather’s family was willing to give up all material possessions, board a ship, travel to a land they did not know – simply for the hope of escape. We all know Europe’s tenuous democracy completely disintegrated in the 1930s. But, it did not collapse in one night or with one man, it crumbled under collective apathy. The rights of many of its citizens were slowly and then quickly removed – the feedback loops that I spoke about earlier, that are essential to strong democracy were methodically dismantled. And people stood by.

Cities with 25% jewish populations, that is 1 out of 4 people, again – for your math, emerged from the war with nary a jew in site. With the exception of two of his cousins, my grandfather’s entire polish family was killed.

Killing 6 million people is hard; much harder than you might think. In case you were thinking about it. These 6 million people had to be identified, categorized and transported from throughout Europe to extermination camps where they were methodically sorted, worked to the bone and killed. That is a complex task and the only way to do it, is with computer technology. In fact, the use of IBM punch card technology was absolutely essential to finding, moving and killing these innocent citizens of europe. It was so important that the founder and CEO of IBM, Thomas Watson, received the Merit cross of the German Eagle, a high honour from the Nazi Regime.

So, let me be very, very clear. Technology is definitely not our saviour, it can be used to either end – good or bad.

Clearly, technology is not THE solution, it is just a tool, it is amoral. In many ways, we have avoided using technology for bad, instead we have used it for entertainment. But if we use our technology for 3D movies, never-ending video games or social check-ins won’t solve poverty. They are closed feedback loops that have no impact on real life.

Not only is it entertainment. We’re surrounded by technology – HD Tvs, the internet, cars, text messaging. When i can text my friend in China and get a intentateous response, I have different expecttions. Consequently, people’s expectations have changed. We demand instant gratification from our technology and government bureaucracy is anything but instant.

How can we ensure our technological innovations are used to improve democracy? You see, the opposite of war or conflict is not peace, it’s dialogue. As long we’re talking we can’t be fighting. And talking can change things, words matter.

Just as Emma Goldman had said, a truly democratic society is not one that votes every 4 years – it’s one that cares. Cares about the disenfranchised, the poor and the criminals. To solve our hard issues, our common problems that we talked about earlier, we must hold a continuous discussion that allows us to make constant adjustments to our policies and traditions. Yes, definitely easier said than done.

MINUTE 11

How do we focus that lost energy, that human potential spent watching TV into something productive – something that make’s society better. How do we help thousands of homeless people get off the streets and into jobs, how do we ensure a clean environment and a balanced budget. How can we get you engaged in solving our common problems?

Because civic engagement’s competing product is not apathy, it’s entertainment. As long as it’s easier to come home after a day’s work and sit in front of your TV than to improve your community, we’re gonna fail. So making it easy to engage is part of the solution.

Not only does it have to be easy, but people need to feel rewarded for participating. They need to feel the same high when greening their neighbourhood as someone does when they attain level 54 Magic Orc in the online video game World of Warcraft. What no warcraft players here?

Until we close that gap of reward, we cannot solve our communal problems. No amount of education is going to change that.

Because, we live in a competitive world, our attention constantly drawn to the shiny new toy. Clearly our capitalist feedback loops work great. We get a new iPhone every year. If the metric for capitalist success is money, what is government’s metric?

Data. Hard information on our environment, our prisons, our education – that is how we will measure our success. We need government to open up their data so that engaged citizens and organizations can see what is happening. whats broken and whats working. We need Data about budgets, contracts, infrastructure, services, immigration and everything government touches. This is the currency of society, it represents something deeper and more meaningful than money ever can.

We need to change the default setting of government. Today, governments are still in the 20th century. They are closed by default. They don’t publish information unless they feel it is essential, easy or have to by law. We need to switch government from a closed by default position to an open by default position. That is the beginning of a real conversation that matters.

All non personal, and I mean all, data needs to be made accessible in an open and digital format so it can easily be processed, visualized, digested and fed back into society in a way that allows us, the citizens, to mobilize, dialogue and close that feedback loop.

Once we all have access to the same knowledge, structured around the cold hard facts, we can begin to have a real conversation. We can remove government procedures and formalities that inhibit true conversation, remove red tape. We can ask our elected officials to enter the discussion on equal ground.

Now organizations around the world are working to make this happen. I mentioned an interactive budget earlier that is done by Open North here in Montreal. But groups are also building databases of elected representatives so other non-profits can mount advocacy campaigns.

These groups also work with media organizations to expose government contracts and route out corruption. They help citizens find clean restaurants, safe neighbourhoods, and easily file access to information requests. In short, these groups are laying the demoractic infrastructure of the 21st century. And it’s already changing things.

In 2007, Kenya had a contested presidential elections, which erupted into ethnic violence. Some intrepid Kenyan hackers built Ushahidi, an amazing tool to mobilize the public. The Ushahidi platform allows people to text in reports of violence, issues or anything really from their mobile phones – the information is then aggregated and displayed on an interactive map. This tool helped limit the ethic violence in Kenya and is now being used around the world for everything from clean water issues in native reserves to violence in the slums of Haiti. It is a tool, built by activists, that mobilizes citizens against the excesses of hatred. Is genocide possible with mobile phones and Ushaidi?

So that’s a start, but we need to spread these solutions to from rural villages in Bangladesh to the upper east side of New York City. We need to build a dialogue inside communities and amongst communities.

As technology and society’s expectations continue to accelerate, it is clear traditional forms of centralized government cannot keep up. People’s expectations are far ahead of what traditional government structure can provide.

The budget simulator I mentioned earlier helps public administrators understand their citizens needs in a simple, tangible and actionable way. What’s great about that example is the data you get, you see citizen profiles: drivers, cyclists, families, singles and then see issues where over 85% of the population was in agreement. This is what society is made up of – variety. We can see correlations between priorities, identify statistical significance and find many, many areas of agreement. The areas where we agree are the low hanging fruit, no government should hesitate to act on them.

But that is one thing, to get our flying cars, our monorails and our clean streets we need a new social contract between citizens and between citizens and government. Information, data, and therefore power, has to be handed back to the people.

Because, the next democracy is not some sort of new governing form based on an iPhone app. It’s a deep and fundamental opening up of government using techology. We go from a suit and tie periodic committee to an ongoing conversation with our elected officials and public services. It is a return to the roots of democracy, where apathy is the exception, not the rule, and where we can all meaningfully contribute to our communities.

So, no matter your day job or your interests – whether it’s security to clean water to a robust economy; wether you’re left and right wing, government matters, collective decisions affect your life and your children’s. We need to embrace techonology to close our society’s feedback loop and start meaninfgul dialogue amongst ourselves and with government. Because, we are the government, it is our and no one else’s to build that society of tomorrow. It’s time to upgrade our democracy.

Thank you for listening.

Understanding a fellow person’s point of view is often extremely hard, yet it can be extremely powerful. Beyond our opposable thumbs, language and large brains – our ability to coordinate our actions into group priorities is probably the most defining human skill. We are remarkably good at discussing, finding compromise and choosing a path of action for a collective group. Yes, we have a war here and there, but we’re generally good at it.

I recently read three great books on negotiating, discusing hard issues and understanding another person’s moral perspective. Getting to Yes is a quick and easy read on negotiation tactics, it could be boiled down to: discuss principles, not positions. This classic negotiation book outlines easy skills you can employ in any negotiation.

Difficult Conversations is the follow up to Getting to Yes. It explains how to understand another person’s history and perspective on an issue. It walks through how to put yourself in the some else’s shoes and find solutions – or at least communicate better.

The recent book by Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, lays out a six pillar moral fondation that all humans use to evaluate decisions. It is an amazing book that is already having an impact in the political world. The six pillars he identifies through various studies are Care for the other (poverty), Harm to others (golden rule), Sanctity of institutions (church), Respect for Authority (father-son), Loyalty to a group (sports team, military) and Liberty and oppression (government, laws). You can read a detailed description of these pillars here and you can see Jonathan Haidt’s TED talk where he summarizes his findings. Haidt argues that Liberals (lefties) put much more emphais on the first two, while social conservatives place an equal(ish) emphasis on all six. There is a lot more meat to it than that, so I encourage all to take a look.

These three books are well written that really help you see where you’re priorities and concerns lie and where someone else might be speaking from. As with many great books, these ones analyse and then systematize many ideas and principles we know in the back of our mind, but have difficulty implementing or applying. I’m personally looking forward to using these tactics in a charged political discussion soon.

If all of us – especially those in the political world – read these books, the world would be a much more civil place. Of course, we will never agree on everything and political parties and opinions are here to stay, but these books paint a fascinating portrait of the human condition and how it alters our perception of the world.